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Title: The Myth of the Rational Voter: Why Democracies Choose Bad Policies
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Manufacturer: Princeton University Press
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| The Myth of the Rational Voter: Why Democracies Choose Bad Policies by Princeton University Press Essential reading for anyone who wants to understand government and politics | The conclusion:
1. Accept that a fair democracy will still make bad mistakes
2. Improve public education, especially when it comes to teaching economics
3. Teach your friends, family, acquaintances how the economy works | | The Myth of the Rational Voter: Why Democracies Choose Bad Policies by Princeton University Press Great book with many brilliant points | | This book does a great job approaching irrationality in microeconomic terms and applying it to everyday situations. I'd strongly recommend this to anyone who is interested in the economics of market situations. | | The Myth of the Rational Voter: Why Democracies Choose Bad Policies by Princeton University Press Well.... | Applying economics to politics has always interested me, but this author failed miserably at it. He talks way too much about economists and how they are perfect and skips the interesting topics.
Miracle of aggregation and supply and demand politics peaked my interest, but he just skimmed over them.
The polls he give about opinions from "smart" people and dumb people are really sketchy in my opinion and not worth it.
All in all, very interesting thesis, very boring book. | | The Myth of the Rational Voter: Why Democracies Choose Bad Policies by Princeton University Press Mancur Olson comes back......with blindspots | After Mancur Olson's "logic of collective actions", we rarely see theories carrying similar logical rigor. Here comes Caplan who offers his "logic of collective belief": Irrational beliefs leading to bad decisions are more likely to persist in voting than in the market because democracy allows voters to act-think freely and the cost of indulging in delusional notions is mostly external when every single vote carries no weight in most elections.
The thrust of Caplan's idea, however, is serious weakened by his own brand of elitism, as if education can help get rid of those anti-market bias, anti-foreign bias, make-work bias, and pessimistic bias (maybe also time-preference bias). The truth is, if the "logic of collective belief" holds, education won't matter much. "Educated fools" can be found just as easily as "majority fools". In refuting the Miracle of Aggregation (random errors cancel out each other by the wisdom of the crowd), Caplan also diminishes the explanatory power of the "rational ignorance" argument, while in fact "rational ignorance" is also a type of irrationality due to the same collective logic--why bother to get educated to be bias-free if the cost of irrationality is both minimum and external and one single vote has no weight anyway? (let alone the source of bias may be more emotional than informational; in this regard, this book can be read together with Drew Westen's "The Political Brain: The Role of Emotion in Deciding the Fate of the Nation")
Caplan's failure to let the Olson style logic run its full course also spread into falsely criticizing the "unfortunate bandwagon effect" of analogizing politics to markets. Politics' different features from markets doesn't mean that the economic tools (rational choice) for markets can't be successfully used in politics. On the contrary, voter irrationality doesn't refute the idea of rational selfishness at all, that's why it still can be called "rational irrationality" or "rational bias". Caplan's idea of "physical pollution" bearing the same "external cost" logic with "mental pollution" of systematically biased beliefs is exactly a good case in point. On the surface, Caplan appears to confuse the common sense and economic usages of rationality, yet the problem is more about the full course of his own logic.
Nevertheless, the message from the "logic of collective belief" is still a strong one: democracy fails because it does what voters want, no matter it is about going to war (invading Iraq), internal conflicts (Iraq, Pakistan, Kenia, Bosnia--also see Jack Snyder's From Voting to Violence), or any other bad policies. Indeed, to say democracy is better than dictatorship is essentially setting the bar too low for western democracy--there are other forms of government and the degree of government could be much more important in many cultures.
| | The Myth of the Rational Voter: Why Democracies Choose Bad Policies by Princeton University Press Why democracy doesn't work | The book was recommended by Harvard economist Greg Mankiw. It's a fascinating book about the failures of democracy. There's a ton of information about how uninformed citizens are continuously wrong about simple economic ideas like free trade, immigration, and countless other topics. Caplan does a good job of steering away from politics and emphasizing on economics. Liberals and Conservatives looking for red meat will be disappointed.
Caplan's main argument is that pure democracies do not work; however, a pure market approach is impractical. The reason democracies do not work isn't because people vote for their self interests (he debunks that idea), but because people are too uninformed to make the correct decision. A citizen may vote for a candidate because he/she is in favor of price controls. The voter thinks price controls are for the best of the country; however, it's bad for everyone. Caplan's answer for the democracy dilemma is not a popular one, especially in a country full of Democratic Fundamentalists (see: George Bush). He argues that encouraging higher voter turnout isn't necessary (and is in fact detrimental), and that prospective voters should have to meet an educational requirement to be allowed vote.
I think this is a great idea; however, there's no way it would win popular approval. The truth is that educated people are better voters that uneducated voters and pure democracies always fail. The Republic as it was initially drawn up by the Founding Fathers is much different today than what they intended. They never intended direct election of Senators and the President, but over the course of American history the constitution has moved closer to a pure democracy.
Overall this is a great book for people with a passion for political science and economics. I'm obviously part of that demographic. For non-economists there's a lot of heavy reading and jargon, but Caplan manages to keep it moving with a lot of real world examples. The Myth of the Rational Voter is a great insight into the failures of democracy. | | The Myth of the Rational Voter: Why Democracies Choose Bad Policies by Princeton University Press Product Description | The greatest obstacle to sound economic policy is not entrenched special interests or rampant lobbying, but the popular misconceptions, irrational beliefs, and personal biases held by ordinary voters. This is economist Bryan Caplan's sobering assessment in this provocative and eye-opening book. Caplan argues that voters continually elect politicians who either share their biases or else pretend to, resulting in bad policies winning again and again by popular demand. Boldly calling into question our most basic assumptions about American politics, Caplan contends that democracy fails precisely because it does what voters want. Through an analysis of Americans' voting behavior and opinions on a range of economic issues, he makes the convincing case that noneconomists suffer from four prevailing biases: they underestimate the wisdom of the market mechanism, distrust foreigners, undervalue the benefits of conserving labor, and pessimistically believe the economy is going from bad to worse. Caplan lays out several bold ways to make democratic government work better--for example, urging economic educators to focus on correcting popular misconceptions and recommending that democracies do less and let markets take up the slack. The Myth of the Rational Voter takes an unflinching look at how people who vote under the influence of false beliefs ultimately end up with government that delivers lousy results. With the upcoming presidential election season drawing nearer, this thought-provoking book is sure to spark a long-overdue reappraisal of our elective system. |
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